Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York,
the son of a Dutch farmer and tavern keeper, a relatively prosperous
middle-class family. He was well educated by private tutors. Van Buren became
the eighth president, the first president to be born a United States citizen. He
governed during the Panic of 1837, the worst American economic crisis to date.
Van Buren is credited with being a major factor in the organization of the
Democratic Party.

Martin Van Buren studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1803 at the
age of 20. His law practice was successful and as a young lawyer he became
involved in politics in his home state of New York. He was a master politician.
Van Buren led the Albany Regency, a political machine that ran New York's
Democratic Republican Party with an iron hand. An opponent of Governor DeWitt
Clinton, Van Buren, through The Regency challenged Clinton's control of state
politics. His adroitness as a party boss earned Van Buren the nicknames "The
Little Magician" and "The Fox of Kinderhook."

Van Buren dressed impeccably and cultivated an elegant life-style that
earned him a reputation as a dandy. His political career thrived. He served in
the New York State Senate in 1812 and was the state attorney general from 1816
to 1819. In 1821 the state legislature that he had come to dominate elected him
to the United States Senate.

Van Buren continued to be a dominant figure in New York State politics
through the Albany Regency while in the Senate. He supported the unsuccessful
presidential candidacy of William H. Crawford in 1824. In 1828 he was elected
governor of New York. During the administration of John
Quincy Adams, Van Buren led Senate opposition to the president and played a
major role in organizing the political coalition that elected Andrew Jackson
president in 1828. President Jackson rewarded
Van Buren by appointing him Secretary of State and Van Buren then resigned his
governorship.

Jackson was soon Involved in a bitter power struggle with Vice President John
C. Calhoun and Van Buren became a close companion and advisor to Jackson.
Van Buren's position was strengthened by Jackson's disaffection with Calhoun. To
enable Jackson to remove the pro-Calhoun element from his cabinet, Van Buren
resigned. Jackson appointed a new Cabinet and sought to reward Van Buren by
appointing him Minister to Great Britain. As President of the Senate, Calhoun
cast the tie-breaking vote and the Senate refused to confirm the appointment.
Enraged, Jackson supported Van Buren for the Vice Presidency. The "Little
Magician" was elected Vice President on the Jacksonian ticket in 1832.
With Jackson's enthusiastic support as his chosen successor, the Democrats
nominated Van Buren for president in 1836. The Whig party, declining to name a
single candidate, sought to defeat Van Buren by running William
Henry Harrison in the West and South and Daniel
Webster in the Northeast. In the face of indecision and splits in the
opposing Whig party, Van Buren won easily, becoming the first New Yorker in the
White House.

The political magic Van Buren had previously garnered seemed to desert
him. He could no longer count on the support of many within his own party. As
president, Van Buren's position was that the federal government should not
interfere with slavery in the states. He opposed the expansion of slavery. His
refusal to support the annexation of Texas offended many southerners. Conducting
a prolonged and costly war against the Seminole Indians in Florida aroused
further opposition also. Northerners saw this as an opening to the admission of
Florida as a slave state.

Prior to 1837 the country had been prospering, but shortly after assuming
the presidency, the country began to experience economic depression. Adhering to
the Jeffersonian principle of limited government, Van Buren refused to yield to
pressure for federal intervention to relieve this distress. Van Buren only
sought to prevent the loss of federal funds which resulted in the collapse of
the banks, something he long had criticized. At Van Buren's urging an
Independent Treasury bill was signed on July 4, 1840 separating government
finances from the nation's banks. This did nothing to alleviate the worst
economic depression thus far in the history of the United States. This period
was known as the Panic of 1837. In 1840, Van Buren lost the presidential
election to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, winning only 60 electoral
votes to Harrison's 234.

In 1844 Van Buren once again pursued the presidential nomination, entering
the nominating convention with the support of the majority of the delegates.
However, by refusing to support the annexation of Texas, Van Buren lost the
support of the South. He failed to receive the two-thirds vote necessary for
nomination. The Democratic Party passed him over for James
K. Polk who was subsequently elected president.

Once again in 1848, Van Buren was nominated for the presidency, this time
by a group known as the Barnburners, a faction of northern Democrats opposed to
the extension of slavery. Despite endorsement by the Free-Soil party, however,
Van Buren was defeated soundly, running a poor third. Discouraged, Van Buren no
longer participated in politics.

VAN BUREN, Martin, eighth
president of the United States, born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, New York, 5
December, 1782; died there, 24 July, 1862. He was the eldest son of Abraham Van
Buren, a small farmer, and of Mary Hoes (originally spelled Goes), whose first
husband was named Van Men. Martin studied the rudiments of English and Latin in
the schools of his native village, and read law in the office of Francis
Sylvester at the age of fourteen years. Rising as a student by slow gradations
from office-boy to lawyer's clerk, copyist of pleas, and finally to the rank of
special pleader in the constables' courts, he patiently pursued his legal
novitiate through the term of seven years and familiarized himself with the
technique of the bar and with the elements of common law. Combining with these
professional studies a fondness for extemporaneous debate, he was early noted
for his intelligent observation of public events and for his interest in
politics. He was chosen to participate in a nominating convention when he was
only eighteen years old. In 1802 he went to New York city and there studied law
with William P. Van Ness, a friend of Aaron Burr. He
was admitted to the bar in 1803, returned to Kinderhook, and associated himself
in practice with his half-brother, James I. Van Alen.

Van Buren was a zealous adherent of Jefferson, and supported Morgan Lewis for
governor of New York in 1803 against Aaron Burr. In February, 1807, he married
Hannah Hoes, a distant kinswoman, and in the winter of 1806-'7 he removed to
Hudson, the county-seat of Columbia county, and in the same year was admitted to
practice in the supreme court. In the state election of 1807 he supported Daniel
D. Tompkins for governor against Morgan Lewis, the latter, in the factional
changes of New York politics, having come to be considered less true than the
former to the measures of Jefferson. In 1808 Van Buren became surrogate of
Columbia county, displacing his half-brother and partner, who belonged to the
defeated faction. He held this office till 1813, when, on a change of party
predominance at Albany, his half-brother was restored. Attentively watching the
drift of political events, he figured in the councils of his party at a
convention held in Albany early in 1811, when the proposed re-charter of the
United States bank was the leading question of Federal politics. Though Albert
Gallatin. secretary of the treasury, had recommended a re-charter, the
predominant sentiment of the Republican party was adverse to the measure. Van
Buren shared in this hostility and publicly lauded the "Spartan
firmness" of George Clinton when as
vice-president he gave his casting-vote in the United States senate against the
bank bill, 20 February, 1811.

In 1812 Van Buren was elected to the senate of New York from the middle
district as a Clinton Republican, defeating Edward P. Livingston, the candidate
of the " Quids," by a majority of 200. He took his seat in
November of that year and became thereby a member of the court of errors, then
composed of senators in connection with the chancellor and the supreme court. As
senator he strenuously opposed the charter of "the Bank of America,"
which, with a large capital and with the promise of liberal subsidies to the
state treasury, was then seeking to establish itself in New York and to take the
place of the United States bank. He upheld Governor Tompkins when, exercising
his extreme prerogative, he prorogued the legislature on 27 March, 1812, to
prevent the passage of the bill. Though counted among the adherents of the
administration of Madison, and though committed to the policy of declaring war
against Great Britain, he sided with the Republican members of the New York
legislature when in 1812 they determined to break from "the Virginia
dynasty" and to support De Witt Clinton for the presidency. In the
following year, however, he dissolved his political relations with Clinton and
resumed the entente cordiale with Madison's administration. I

n 1814 he carried through the legislature an effective war-measure known as "the
classification bill," providing for the levy of 12,000 men, to be
placed at the disposal of the government for two years. He drew up the
resolution of thanks voted by the legislature to General
Jackson for the victory of New Orleans. In 1815, while still a member of the
state senate, he was appointed attorney-general of the state, superseding the
venerable Abraham Van Vechten. In this same year De Witt Clinton. falling a prey
to factional rivalries in his own party, was removed by the Albany council from
the mayoralty of New York city, an act of petty proscription in which Van Buren
sympathized, according to the "spoils system " then in vogue.
In 1816 he was re-elected to the state senate for a further term of four years,
and, removing to Albany, formed a partnership with his life-long friend,
Benjamin F. Butler. In the same year he was appointed a regent of the University
of New York. In the legislative discussions of 1816 he advocated the surveys
preliminary to Clinton's scheme for uniting the waters of the great lakes with
the Hudson.

The election of Governor Tompkins as vice-president of the United States had
left the "Bucktails" of the Republican party without their
natural leader. The people, moreover, in just resentment at the indignity done
to Clinton by his removal from the New York mayoralty, were now spontaneously
minded to make him governor that he might preside over the execution of the Erie
canal which he had projected. Van Buren acquiesced in a drift of opinion that he
was powerless to check, and, on the election of Clinton, supported the canal
policy; but he soon came to an open rupture with the governor on questions of
public patronage, and, arraying himself in active opposition to Clinton's
reelection, he was in turn subjected to the proscription of the Albany council
acting in Clinton's interest. He was removed from the office of attorney-general
in 1819. He opposed the re-election of Clinton in 1820. Clinton was re-elected
by a small majority, but both houses of the legislature and the council of
appointment fell into the hands of the anti-Clinton Republicans. The office of
attorney-general was now tendered anew to Van Buren, but he declined it. The
politics of New York, a mesh of factions from the beginning of the century, were
in a constant state of swirl and eddy from 1819 till 1821.

The old party-formations were dissolved in the "era of good
feeling." What with "Simon-pure" Republicans,
Clintonian Republicans, Clintonian Federalists, "high-minded"
Federalists cleaving to Monroe, and Federalists pure and simple, the points of
crystallization were too many to admit of forming a strong or compact body
around any center. No party could combine votes enough in the legislature of
1818-'19 to elect its candidate for United States senator. Yet out of this
medley of factions and muddle of opinions Van Buren, by his moderation and his
genius for political organization, evolved order and harmony at the election for
senator in the following year. Under his lead all parties united on Rufus
King, a Federalist of the old school, who had patriotically supported the
war against Great Britain after it was declared, and who by his candor had won
the confidence of President Monroe; and Rufus King was re-elected with practical
unanimity at a time when he was fresh from the hot debate in the United States
sell-ate against the admission of Missouri without a restriction on slavery. His
anti-slavery views on that question were held by Van Buren to "conceal
no , plot" against the Republicans, who, he engaged, would give "a
true direction" to that momentous issue. What the "true
direction" was to be he did not say, except as it might be inferred
from his concurrence in a resolution of the legislature of New York instructing
the senators of that state "to oppose the admission, as a state in the
Union, of any territory not comprised within the original boundaries of the
United States without making the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable
condition of admission." In that Republican resolution of 1820 "
the Wilmot proviso" of 1847 appeared above our political horizon, but
soon vanished from sight on the passage of the Missouri compromise in 1821.

On 6 February, 1821, Van Buren was elected United States senator, receiving
in both houses of the legislature a majority of twenty-five over Nathan Sanford,
the Clintonian candidate, for whom the Federalists also voted. In the same year
he was chosen from Otsego county as a member of the convention to revise the
constitution of the state. In that convention he met in debate Chancellor Kent,
Chief-Justice Ambrose Spencer, and others. Against innovations his attitude was
here conservative. He advocated the executive veto. He opposed manhood suffrage,
seeking to limit the elective franchise to householders, that this "invaluable
right" might not be "cheapened" and that the rural
districts might not be overborne by the cities. He favored Negro suffrage if
black Americans were taxed. With offence to party friends, he vehemently
resisted the eviction by constitutional change of the existing supreme court,
though its members were his bitter political enemies, lie opposed an elective
judiciary and the choice of minor offices by the people, as swamping the right
it pretended to exalt.

He took his seat in the United States senate, 3 December, 1821, and was at
once made a member of its committees on the judiciary and finance. For many
years he was chairman of the former. In March, 1822, he voted, on the bill to
provide a territorial government for Florida, that no slave should be directly
or indirectly imported into that territory "except by a citizen removing
into it for actual settlement and being at the time a bona-fide owner of such
slave."

Van Buren voted with the northern senators for the retention of this clause;
but, its exclusion by the vote of the southern senators did not import any
countenance to the introduction of slaves into Florida from abroad, as such
introduction was already prohibited by a Federal statute which in another part
of the gill was extended to Florida. Always averse to imprisonment for debt as
the result of misfortune, Van Buren took an early opportunity to advocate its
abolition as a feature of Federal jurisprudence. He opposed in 1824 the
ratification of the convention with England for the suppression of the
slave-trade (perhaps because a qualified right of search was annexed to it),
though the convention was urgently pressed on the senate by President
Monroe. He supported William H. Crawford for the presidency in 1824, both in
the congressional caucus and before the people. He voted for the protective
tariff of 1824 and for that of 1828, though he took no part in the discussion of
the economic principles underlying either. He voted for the latter under
instructions, maintaining a politic silence as to his personal opinions, which
seem to have favored a revenue tariff with incidental protection.

He vainly advocated an amendment of the constitution for the election of
president by the intervention of an electoral college to be specially chosen
from as many separate districts as would comprise the whole country while
representing the electoral power of all the states. The measure was designed to
appease the jealousy of the small states by practically wiping out state lines
in presidential elections and at the same time proposed to guard against,
elections by the house of representatives, as in ease of no choice at a first
scrutiny the electoral colleges were to be reconvened. After voting for a few "
internal improvements," he opposed them as unconstitutional in the
shape then given to them, and proposed in 1824 and again in 1825 to bring them
within the power of congress by a constitutional amendment that should protect
the "sovereignty of the states" while equally distributing
these benefits of the government.

In a debate on the Federal judiciary in 1826 he took high ground in favor of "state
rights" as against the umpirage of the supreme court on political
questions, and deplored the power of that court to arraign sovereign states at
its bar for the passage of laws alleged to impair "the obligation of
contracts." He confessed admiration for the Republicans of 1802 who had
repealed "the midnight judiciary act." He opposed the Panama
mission, and reduced the "Monroe
doctrine" to its true historical proportions as a caveat and not a "pledge."
On all questions he was strenuous for a "strict construction of the
constitution." He favored in 1826 the passage of a general bankrupt
law, but, in opposing the pending measure, sharply accentuated the technical
distinction of English law between "bankrupt" and "insolvent"
acts--a distinction which, in the complexity of modern business transactions,
Chief-Justice Marshall had pronounced to be more metaphysical than real, but
which to Van Buren was vital because the constitution says nothing about "insolvent
laws."

He was re-elected to the senate in 1827, but soon resigned his seat to accept
the office of governor of New York, to which he was elected in 1828. As governor
he opposed free banking and advocated the "safety-fund system,"
making all the banks of the state mutual insurers of each other's soundness. He
vainly recommended the policy of separating state from Federal elections. After
entering on the office of governor he never resumed the practice of law. Yah
Buren was a zealous supporter of Andrew Jackson
in the presidential election of 1828, and was called in 1829 to be the premier
of the new administration.

As secretary of state he brought, to a favorable close the long-standing feud
between the United States and England with regard to the West India trade.
Having an eye to the presidential succession after Jackson's second term, and
not wishing meanwhile to compromise the administration or himself, he resigned
his secretary ship in June, 1831, and was sent as minister to England. The
senate refused in 1832 to confirm his nomination, by the casting-vote of John
C. Calhoun, the vice-president. Conscientious Whigs, like Theodore
Frelinghuysen, confessed in after days the reluctance with which they consented
to this doubtful act. A clause in one of Van Buren's dispatches while secretary,
containing an invidious reference to the preceding administration, was alleged
as the ground of his rejection. The offence was venial, compared with the
license taken by Robert R. Livingston when, in negotiating the Louisiana
purchase, he cited the specter of a Federalist administration playing into the
hands of " the British faction." Moreover, the pretext was an
afterthought, as the clause had excited no remark when first published, and,
when the outcry was raised, Jackson " took the responsibility "
for it. The tactical blunder of the Whigs soon avenged itself by bringing
increased popularity to Van Buren. He became, with Jackson, the symbol of his
party, and, elected vice-president in 1832, he came in 1833 to preside over the
body which a year before had rejected him as foreign minister. He presided with
unvarying suavity and fairness.

Taking no public part in the envenomed discussions of the time, he was known
to sympathize with Jackson in his warfare on the United States bank, and soon
came to be generally regarded by his party as the lineal successor of that
popular leader He was formally nominated for the presidency on 20 May, 1835, and
was elected in 1836 over his three competitors, William
H. Harrison, Hugh L. White, and Daniel Webster,
by a majority of 57 in the electoral college, but of only 25,000 in the popular
vote. The tide of Jacksonism was beginning to ebb. South Carolina, choosing her
electors by state legislature and transferring to Van Buren her hatred of
Jackson, voted for Willie P. Mangum. During the canvass Van Buren had been
opposed at the north and championed at the south as "a northern man with
southern principles." As vice-president, he had in 1835 given a
casting-vote for the bill to prohibit the circulation of "incendiary
documents" through the mails, and as a candidate for the presidency he
had pledged himself to resist the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia without the consent of the slave-states and to oppose the "
slightest interference" with slavery in the states. He had also pledged
himself against the distribution of surplus revenues among the states, against
internal improvements at Federal expense, and against a national bank.

Compelled by the fiscal embarrassments of the government, in the financial
crash of 1837, to summon congress to meet in special session, 4 September, 1837,
he struck in his first message the key-note of his whole administration. After a
detailed analysis of the financial situation, and of the causes in trade and
speculation that had led to it, he proceeded to develop his favorite idea of an
independent treasury for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys.
This idea was not new. It was as old as the constitution. The practice of the
government had departed from it only by insensible degrees, until at length, in
spite of the protests of Jefferson, it had been consolidated into a formal order
of congress that the revenues of the government should be deposited in the
United States bank. On the removal of the deposits by Jackson in 1833, they had
been placed in the custody of " the pet banks," and had here
been used to stimulate private trade and speculation, until the crisis in 1837
necessitated a change of fiscal policy. By every consideration of public duty
and safety, conspiring with what he believed to be economic advantage to the
people, Van Buren enforced the policy of an independent treasury on a reluctant
congress. There was here no bating of breath or mincing of words; but it was not
until near the close of his administration that he succeeded in procuring the
assent of congress to the radical measure that divorced the treasury from
private banking and trade. The measure was formally repealed by the Whig
congress of 1842, after which the public moneys were again deposited in selected
banks until 1846, when the independent treasury was reinstalled and has ever
since held its place under all changes of administration. He signed the
independent treasury bill on 4 July, 1840, as being a sort of " second Declaration
of Independence," in his own idea and in that of his party. Von
Holst, the sternest of Van Buren's critics, awards to him on "this one
question" the credit of " courage, firmness, and statesman-like
insight." It was the chef d'oeuvre of his public career. He also
deserves credit for the fidelity with which, at the evident sacrifice of
popularity with a certain class of voters, he adhered to neutral obligations on
the outbreak of the Canada rebellion late in 1837.

The administration of Van Buren, beginning and ending with financial panic,
went down under the cloud resting on the country in 1840. The enemies and the
friends of the United States bank had equally sown the wind during Jackson's
administration. Van Buren was left to reap the whirlwind, which in the
"political hurricane" of 1840 lifted General Harrison into the
presidential chair. The Democratic defeat was overwhelming. Harrison received
234 electoral votes, and Van Buren only 60. The majority for Harrison in the
popular vote was nearly 140,000. Retiring after this overthrow to the shades of
Lindenwald, a beautiful country-seat which he had purchased in his native
county, Van Buren gave no vent to repinings. In 1842 he made a tour through the
southern states, visiting Henry Clay at Ashland. In
1843 he came to the front with clear-cut views in favor of a tariff for revenue
only. But on the newly emergent question of Texas annexation he took a decided
stand in the negative, and on this rock of offence to the southern wing of his
party his candidature was wrecked in the Democratic national convention of 1844,
which met at Baltimore on 27 May. He refused to palter with this issue, on the
ground of our neutral obligations to Mexico, and when the nomination went to James
K. Polk, of Tennessee, he gave no sign of resentment. His friends brought to
Polk a loyal support, and secured his election by carrying for him the decisive
vote of New York.

Van Buren continued to take an interest in public affairs, and when in 1847
the acquisition of new territory from Mexico raised anew the vexed question of
slavery in the territories, he gave in his adhesion to the "Wilmot
proviso." In the new elective affinities produced by this "burning
question" a redistribution of political elements took place in the
chaos of New York politics. The " Barnburner" and the "Hunker"
factions came to a sharp cleavage on this line of division. The former declared
their "uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery."
In the Herkimer Democratic convention of 26 October. 1847, the Free-soil banner
was openly displayed, and delegates were sent to the Democratic national
convention. From this convention, assembled at Baltimore in May, 1848, the
Herkimer delegates se ceded before any presidential nomination was made. In
June, 1848, a Barnburner convention met at Utica to organize resistance to the
nomination of General Lewis Cass, who, in his " Nicholson letter,"
had disavowed the "Wilmot proviso." To this convention Van
Buren addressed a letter, declining in advance a nomination for the presidency,
but pledging opposition to the new party shibboleth.

In spite of his refusal, he was nominated, and this nomination was reaffirmed
by the Free-soil national convention of Buffalo, 9 August, 1848, when Charles
Francis Adams was associated with him as candidate for the vice-presidency. In
the ensuing presidential election this ticket received only 291,263 votes, but,
as the result of the triangular duel, General Cass was defeated and Gen. Zachary
Taylor, the Whig candidate, was elected. The precipitate annexation of Texas
and its natural sequel, the war with Mexico, had brought their Nemesis in the
utter confusion of national politics. Van Buren received no electoral votes, but
his popular Democratic vote in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York exceeded
that of Cass. Henceforth he was simply a spectator in the political arena. On
all public questions save that of slavery he remained an unfaltering Democrat,
and when it was fondly supposed that "the slavery issue" had
been forever exorcised by the compromise measures of 1850, he returned in full
faith and communion to his old party allegiance. In 1852 he began to write his "
Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United
States" (New York, 1867), but it was never finished and was published
as a fragment. He supported Franklin Pierce for
the presidency in 1852, and, after spending two years in Europe, returned in
time to vote for James Buchanan in 1856. In 1860
he voted for the combined electoral ticket against Lincoln,
but when the civil war began he gave to the administration his zealous support.

Van Buren was the target of political accusation during his whole public
career, but kept his private character free from reproach. In his domestic life
he was as happy as he was exemplary. Always prudent in his habits and economical
in his tastes, he none the less maintained in his style of living the easy state
of a gentleman, whether in public station at Albany and Washington, or at
Lindenwald in his retirement. As a man of the world he was singularly affable
and courteous, blending formal deference with natural dignity and genuine
cordiality. Intensely partisan in his opinions and easily startled by the red
rag of "Hamiltonian Federalism,"
he never carried the contentions of the political arena into the social sphere.
The asperities of personal rivalry estranged him for a time from Calhoun, after
the latter denounced him in the senate in 1837 as "a practical
politician," with whom " justice, right, patriotism, etc., were
mere vague phrases," but with his great Whig rival, Henry Clay, he
maintained unbroken relations of friendship through the vicissitudes of
political fortune.

As a lawyer his rank was eminent. Though never rising in speech to the
heights of oratory, he was equally fluent and facile before bench or jury, and
equally felicitous whether expounding the intricacies of fact or of law in a
case. His manner was mild and insinuating, never declamatory. Without carrying
his juridical studies into the realm of jurisprudence, he yet had a knowledge of
law that fitted him to cope with the greatest advocates of the New York bar. The
evidences of his legal learning and acute dialectics are still preserved in the
New York reports of Johnson Cowen, and Wendell. As a debater in the senate, he
always went to the pith of questions, disdaining the arts of rhetoric. As a
writer of political letters or of state papers, he carried diffusiveness to a
fault, which sometimes hinted at a weakness in positions requiring so much defense.
As a politician he was masterful in leadership--so much so that, alike by
friends and foes, he was credited with reducing its practices to a fine art. He
was a member of the famous Albany regency which for so many years controlled the
politics of New York, and was long popularly known as its "director."
Fertile in the contrivance of means for the attainment of the public ends which
he deemed desirable. he was called "the little magician," from the
deftness of his touch in politics. But combining the statesman's foresight with
the politician's tact, he showed his sagacity rather by seeking a majority for
his views than by following the views of a majority. Accused of "non-committalism,"
and with some show of reason in the early stages of his career, it was only as
to men and minor measures of policy that he practiced a prudent reticence. On
questions of deeper principle--an elective judiciary, Negro suffrage, universal
suffrage, etc. he boldly took the unpopular side.

In a day of unexampled political giddiness he stood firmly for his
sub-treasury system against the doubts of friends, the assaults of enemies, and
the combined pressure of wealth and culture in the country. Dispensing patronage
according to the received custom of his times, he yet maintained a high standard
of appointment. That he could rise above selfish considerations was shown when
he promoted the elevation of Rufus King in 1820, or when he strove in 1838 to
bring Washington Irving into his cabinet with small promise of gain to his
doubtful political fortunes by such an "unpractical" appointment. As a
statesman he had his compact fagot of opinions, to which he adhered in evil or
good report.

It might seem that the logic of his principles in 1848, combined with the
subsequent drift of events, should have landed him in the Free-soil party that Abraham
Lincoln led to victory in 1860: but it is to be remembered that, while Van
Buren's political opinions were in a fluid state, they had been cast in the
doctrinal moulds of Jefferson, and had there taken rigid form and pressure. In
the natural history of American party-formations he supposed that an enduring
antithesis had always been discernible between the "money power"
and the "farming interest" of the land. In his annual message
of December, 1838, holding language very modern in its emphasis, he counted "the
anti-republican tendencies of associated wealth" as among the strains
that had been put upon our government. This is indeed the mare thesis of his "
Inquiry," a book which is snore an apologia than a history. In that
chronicle of his life-long antipathy to a splendid consolidated government, with
its imperial judiciary, funding sys-terns, high tariffs, and internal
improvements--the whole surmounted by a powerful national bank as the "regulator"
of finance and politics--he has left an outlined sketch of the only dramatic
unity that can be found for his eventful career.

Confessing in 1848 that he had gone further in concession to slavery than
many of his friends at the north had approved, he satisfied himself with a
formal protest against the repeal of the Missouri compromise, carried through
congress while he was traveling in Europe, and against the policy of making the
Dred Scott decision a rule of Democratic politics, though he thought the
decision sound in point of technical law. With these reservations, avowedly made
in the interest of "strict construction" and of "old-time
Republicanism" rather than of Free-soil or National reformation, he
maintained his allegiance to the party with which his franc was identified, and
which he was perhaps the more unwilling to leave because of the many sacrifices
he had made in its service The biography of Van Buren has been written by
William H. Holland (Hartford, 1835)" Francis J. Grund (in German, 1835);
William Emmons (Washington, 1835)" David Crockett (Philadelphia,
1836)" William L. Mackenzie (Boston, 1846)" William Allen Butler (New
York, 1862); and Edward M. Shepard (Boston, 1888). Mackenzie's book is compiled
in part from surreptitious letters, shedding a lurid light on the "
practical polities" of the times. Butler's sketch was published immediately
after the ex-president's death. Shepard's biography is written with adequate
learning and in a philosophical spirit.

--His wife, Hannah Van Buren, born in
Kinderhook, New York, in 1782; died in Albany, New York, 5 February, 1819, was
of Dutch descent, and her maiden name was Hoes. She was educated in the schools
of her native village, and was the classmate of Mr. Van Buren, whom she married
in 1807. She was devoted to her domestic cares and duties, and took little
interest in social affairs, but was greatly beloved by the poor. When she
learned that she could live but a few days, she expressed a desire that her
funeral be conducted with the utmost simplicity, and the money that would
otherwise have been devoted to mourning emblems be given to the needy.

--His brother, Lawrence Van Buren, soldier, born in Kinderhook, New York, in
1783; died there, 1 July, 1868, served in the war of 1812-'15, in which he
attained the rank of major. He was a presidential elector on the Democratic
ticket in 1852.--Martin's son, Abraham, soldier, born in Kinderhook, New York,
27 November, 1807; died in New York city, 15 March, 1873, was graduated at the
United States military academy in 1827, and attached to the 2d infantry as 2d
lieutenant. He served for two years on the western frontier, and for the next
seven years as aide-de-camp to the general-in-chief, Alexander Macomb, except
during several months in 1836, when he accompanied General Winfield Scott as a
volunteer aide in the expedition against the Seminole Indians. He was
commissioned as a captain in the 1st dragoons on 4 July, 1836, resigning on 3
March, 1837, to become his father's private secretary. He brought daily reports
of the proceedings of congress to President Van Buren, who was often influenced
by his suggestions. At the beginning of the war with Mexico he re-entered the
army as major and paymaster, his commission dating from 26 June, 1846. He served
on the staff of General Zachary Taylor at Monterey, and subsequently joined the
staff of General Scott as a volunteer, and participated in every engagement
frown Vera Cruz to the capture of the city of Mexico, being brevetted
lieutenant-colonel for bravery at Contreras and Churubusco on 20 August, 1847.
He served in the paymaster's department after the war till 1 June, 1854, when he
again resigned, after which he resided for a part of the time in Columbia, South
Carolina (where his wife inherited a plantation), till 1859, and afterward in
New York city except during three years' absence in Europe.

--Another son, John Van Buren, lawyer, born in Hudson, New York, 18 February,
1810; died at sea, 13 October, 1866, was graduated at Yale in 1828, studied law
with Benjamin F. Butler, and was admitted to the bar at Albany in 1830. In the
following year he accompanied his father to London as an attache of the
legation. In February, 184,5, he was elected attorney-general of the state of
New York, serving till 31 December, 1846. He took an active part in the
political canvass of 1848 as an advocate of the exclusion of slavery from the
territories, but did not remain with the Free-soil party in its later
developments. He held high rank as a lawyer, appearing in the Edwin Forrest and
many other important cases, was an eloquent; pleader, and an effective political
speaker. He died on the voyage from Liverpool to New York. He was popularly
known as " Prince John," was tall and handsome, and of elegant manners
and appearance.-

-Abraham's wife, Angelica Van Buren, born in Sumter district, South Carolina,
about 1820; died in New York city, 29 December, 1878, was a daughter of Richard
Singleton, a planter, and a cousin of William C. Preston and of Mrs. James
Madison, who, while her kinswoman was completing her education in Philadelphia,
presented her to President Van Buren. A year later she married Major Van Buren,
in November, 1838, and on the following New Year's day she made her first
appearance as mistress of the White House. With her husband she visited England
(where her uncle, Andrew Stevenson, was United States minister) and other
countries of Europe, in the spring of 1839, returning in the autumn to resume
her place as hostess of the presidential mansion. The accompanying vignette is
from a portrait painted by Henry Inman.

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